Review: X-Men Visionaries - Neal Adams

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4 stars for X-Men Visionaries - Neal Adams

Neal Adams is a comic book legend who, along with writer-artist Jim Steranko, helped raise comic book art to a whole new level in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Adams began his comic book career at DC Comics, but was intrigued by the "Marvel Method" of creating comics, and by 1969 he was also freelancing for Marvel. His first assignment for the company was as artist/co-plotter (with scripter Roy Thomas) for the X-Men series.

Today, Adams' nine issue run on X-Men could set you back over $1,000 in Near-Mint condition. Fortunately the entire run, consisting of X-Men #56-63 and #65 (#64 was a fill-in drawn by Don Heck), has been collected in paperback in X-Men Visionaries - Neal Adams.

Return of Professor X

These are key issues. Not only was the character of Havok introduced to the team during this run, but Professor X, Magneto and the mutant-hunting Sentinels - all of whom had been previously killed or destroyed, were also brought back.

Of course, characters return from the dead all the time in comics, but the beauty of these issues is that the characters' reappearances didn't feel like "cheats". They were believable (at least to the degree that "believability" applies to a comic book about super-powered mutants).

The artwork was eye-opening for X-Men fans, as well. Comic book pages at the time generally consisted of square and rectangular panels separated by neat borders, but Adams filled panels of irregular size, shape and placement with almost photorealistic artwork, keeping in mind the appearance of the entire page, not just the individual panels, in his layouts. For the most part, these pages are reproduced quite well in this paperback collection, which is printed on a higher grade of paper than the newsprint used in the original comics. The only real problem with the book is in the coloring, which is stunningly sloppy in a few places.

Neal Adams at Supermegafest 2012. | Source

Bonus Content

As a bonus, X-Men Visionaries - Neal Adams also contains some unpublished pencil art for God Loves, Man Kills, an X-Men graphic novel Adams had begun pencilling in the early 1980s, but was unable to finish (the book was ultimately drawn by Brent Anderson), as well as an introduction from Neal Adams, an afterward from inker Tom Palmer, and a new cover, also drawn by Adams.

Rating: 4 Stars

I give the book 4 out of 5 stars, taking away one star for the coloring, which Marvel should have taken much greater care with. Another problem, one commonly seen in collections based on a single artist, is that the book leaves the reader hanging. It ends with Professor X falling into a coma, a situation which is resolved in X-Men #66 (following a classic battle between the X-Men and the Hulk), but that issue isn't part of this collection because it was drawn by Sal Buscema, not Neal Adams.

Despite these drawbacks, I consider X-Men Visionaries - Neal Adams (which for some reason is listed at Amazon.com as The Neal Adams Collection - X-Men Visionaries) to be a must-have for fans of Neal Adams, the X-Men, or of comic book art in general.

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Glen Nunes 4 years agofrom Cape Cod, Massachusetts

cperuzzi - I agree about the stock poses. I imagine that if you draw comics for a living, it must be easy to fall back on a few poses that you know work from time to time. Thanks for reading and commenting.

Patrice - I liked Marvel much better than DC in the 60s too! Except for Batman. I was a big Batman fan. In fact, the first Neal Adams art I ever saw was on Batman. As for Stan Lee, I'm a huge fan. I just got a copy of Tales of Suspense #63 ("The Origin of Captain America") autographed by him at a convention this month (also got a book signed by Neal Adams)! Stan gets criticized sometimes for taking too much credit, and I agree that artists like Kirby and Ditko are underappreciated, but that doesn't take away from Stan's accomplishments. Thanks for stopping by!

PWalker281 4 years ago

I didn't know anything about the illustrators of Marvel Comics when I was reading them back in high school in the mid to late 60s. All I know is that I loved the characters and the stories, especially the X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and Thor. I thought DC Comics were boring, so hardly ever read them. The Marvel characters were quirky, human, and a lot more interesting.

I think Stan Lee was ahead of his time - I either read or saw an interview somewhere of Stan Lee explaining that the X-Men was his attempt at shedding light on the evils of racial discrimination of the time, but he did it indirectly through his mutant superheroes. Can't say that it actually worked, although who knows what subconscious re-conditioning those comics achieved in readers.

Thanks for sharing this interesting info about the Marvel illustrators. Voted up and shared.

Christopher Peruzzi 4 years agofrom Freehold, NJ

I've always liked Adams' work. Although I've found that he falls back on some stock poses for his characters - all illustrators do. Once you see them you cannot not see them.

That said Adams is a comic legend and the Visionary series is no exception to his work.